Drive By Truckers playing The Pageant Saturday, promoting English Oceans album
Fresh off the release March 3 of their latest album, English Oceans, the Drive By Truckers are on tour, and will stop at The Pageant on Saturday night, March 29. Members Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley recently discussed the creation and recording of the album.....
English Oceans, the 12th release by Athens,
Georgia's Drive-By Truckers, is an elegantly balanced and deeply engaged
new effort that finds the group refreshed and firing on all cylinders.
All but one of the collection's 13 new songs, written by
singer-guitarists and co-founding members Patterson Hood and Mike
Cooley, were recorded during 13 days of sessions in August 2013 with
longtime producer David Barbe.
Six of the songs were the result of a burst of writing activity by Cooley.
"I had time to write," Cooley says. "After we came off the road last
time, we decided we were going to let it rest for a while. So I had
time to really focus. I kind of had to re-learn how to write, because I
didn't write as many songs as I'd wanted on the last couple of records. I
was happy with these songs, and thrilled to go in and record so many
that I felt real strongly about."
Hood notes, "I don't think we've ever had a record where Cooley was
as deeply involved in every aspect of the making of it as he was this
time. With Cooley's writing, there's almost no precedent for it in our
catalog. He came in with this stunning bunch of songs, full of this
beautiful imagery."
Writing independently, Cooley and Hood penned songs that dovetailed
brilliantly with each other. Hood says, "Every song on this record
connects with another song. I noticed Cooley's got a line in 'Primer
Coat' about 'apron strings,' and I have the exact same image in one of
my songs, 'Hanging On.' It goes on and on and on like that on this
record, and that's a pretty good sign for things, particularly given how
different our temperaments are and our styles of writing are."
Cooley and Hood's brace of character-based songs depict a neatly
interlocking gallery of relationships, often in dissolution and discord.
The last song written and recorded for the album, Hood's rave-up
"Pauline Hawkins," was based on a new novel by Willy Vlautin and penned
after another of his compositions was scrapped.
Hood says, "There was such a balance between Cooley's songs and my
songs that taking a song off the record would upset the balance a little
bit. I liked the back-and-forth flow, like our shows tend to do. I got
an advance copy of Willy's latest book, The Free. I've been a fan of his
writing for a while. I read it in about three days. I finished it on
Saturday, I wrote the song on Sunday, and then we cut it on Thursday and
mastered the record on the following Monday. It sure makes it a better
record."
DBT's ever-keen political edge can be seen in two songs on the
release. Cooley's "Made Up English Oceans" derives from his interest in
the career of Lee Atwater, the Republican operative who was active in
the Reagan and Bush campaigns of the '80s. "He was the guy that Karl
Rove and all of the modern dirty tricksters looked to – he was one of
the granddaddies of it all. That song is from his point of view,
fictionally of course. It's him making his pitch, telling what he
understands about young, Southern men."
Hood says "The Part of Him" was inspired by the procession of
scandals that plague the political world year after year. "It's about
political assholery -- there's someone new playing that role every few
months," he says. "As soon as we get rid of one of them, someone comes
up and starts playing that part again."
Reflecting the renewed high level of collaboration between the band's two principals,
English Oceans marks an unprecedented event: the recording of a Hood song, "Til He's Dead or Rises," with Cooley assuming the lead vocal.
Cooley says, "I remember Patterson was getting frustrated trying to
sing it. He was doing fine, but it seemed like there was something he
wanted to do that wasn't coming. I was in the control room thinking, 'I
could probably sing this' -- though it wasn't like I was saying, 'Oh, I
can sing this a lot better than that.' I was thinking, 'This sounds like
something I could sing.' Right after that, he walks into the control
room and says, 'You want to trying singing this? It sounds more like you
than me.' I said, 'Yeah, I was just thinking that.'"
"Grand Canyon," the final song on the album, is an emotionally
overwhelming elegy for Craig Lieske, a longtime member of DBT's touring
family. The former manager of Athens' 40 Watt Club and a key player in
the city's experimental music scene, Lieske died suddenly of a heart
attack in January 2013 following the first night of the band's
three-night homecoming stand in Athens.
English Oceans is dedicated to him.
"I probably wrote it in 15 minutes," Hood says. "It wasn't any kind
of a conscious thing. It's the most important song of mine on the
record. I wrote new songs to go with it. It recalibrated something. It
became a totally different record for me than the record I thought we
were going to make."
The album was recorded with a compact, retooled lineup. Jay
Gonzalez, who joined the band in 2008 as keyboardist, stepped into an
expanded role by adding guitar to his duties, while bassist Matt Patton
was drafted from the Tuscaloosa group The Dexateens. The unit was
road-tested during dates in 2013.
Cooley says, "This lineup is so direct. It can go from this chainsaw
rock 'n' roll to very delicate, pretty-sounding stuff. We wrote a lot
of those kinds of songs, and this lineup got all of that well."
Hood agrees: "We recorded with a stripped-down lineup that gave
things a more primal and immediate feel. It's a more turn-on-a-dime kind
of thing, which suits these songs, and us as a band. It's a very
tasteful group, and when it needs to be it can be a very big, powerful,
over-the-top band, too, and it can go from one to the other seamlessly."
Looking at the accomplishments of
English Oceans
from the perspective of DBT's nearly three-decade history, both Cooley
and Hood decline to hedge their bets on the quality of their latest
work.
"You're always hesitant to say, 'Oh, this is the best record we've
ever made,'" Cooley says, "because you always want to. And sometimes you
say it, and sometimes you're right, and sometimes you think, 'Well,
maybe I jumped the gun on that a little bit, I got excited.' But I think
this just might be the best record we've ever made."
Hood concurs enthusiastically: "It's my favorite thing that we've
ever done. I'm proud of our catalog – we always try to make as good a
record as we can make. Sometimes things just work. This time, we made
kind of a magical record. I've always felt that Decoration Day was our
best record, and this is the first one that I think is a better record
than that was. Every piece of the puzzle fit."
Who: The Drive By Truckers, with guests Blitzen Trapper
When: Saturday, March 29
Where: The Pageant, St. Louis
How: www.thepageant.com
